Last Days of Montreal

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Last Days of Montreal Page 24

by John Brooke


  7. Miracle of the hat

  They’re moving through a sidewalk sale in rue St. Hubert. The merchants have brought their wares outside. Traffic has been rerouted. The people roam freely, poring through objects piled in bins, set out on tables, hung in doors: cheap shoes, cut-rate plastic things, the overflowing Dollar stores — Vente de liquidation! Vente de fermeture! $9.99 et moins! Spécial! Menocchio’s step is wide but slow, almost a shuffle, and this is their perpetual pace. His eyes are narrowed, his heavy body lists forward like a bull biding its time…or like the artist he resembles, mulling a creation…or like the current Pope, calculating the price of redemption…Menocchio’s image wavers before her, as if trying to settle. He is also the scheming boss, a cunning peasant, some dark man who will exploit her secret for all it’s worth.

  In fact, he’s looking for a hat. He likes those motoring caps, has sported four different ones since that day in April: a royal blue, a beige twill, a plain white, a boring khaki.

  Alors, what to talk about — shopping, or the deeper thing? “Do you think he went inside me? That Miko? Do you think his ugly soul crawled out from under his car and came to live in me?”

  “I don’t know. Go sit on my bench. Sit there and speak with him about it.”

  “But he’s dead. He’s gone,” she says, kicking petulantly at a discarded paper cup. “And he was so horrid!”

  “And you are good? A good woman?”

  “No…no — if I did it, I must be bad.”

  “When I pass the bench and see it empty, this hurts me. That is bad.”

  Menocchio’s pace, Menocchio’s logic. And Geneviève — thrown so deftly back again against herself, against her impatience, her sin, all this evidence against her.

  He says, “I’m thinking my next cap should be yellow. What do you think?”

  Submitting, she looks around for the desired item. And Menocchio stops their march and begins to sing. In Latin: “Caelestibus pasti deliciis, te supplies deprecamur Domine, Deus noster…”

  Being fifty and a bit, the sound of it is not unfamiliar; although back then you heard it without knowing, regardless of how those Sisters worked to drum its meaning into your head. Today she knows it. Geneviève hears herself translating, adding quiet harmony: Feed with heavenly delights, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord our God: That the blessed Mary ever Virgin protecting us, preserved from the errors of the flesh, we may be found both firm in faith and efficacious in works… But how? How could it return to her across thirty years of wandering? Her heart is pounding as she gazes over the heads of everyone toward the Lady five blocks north, standing in the sky.

  Menocchio stops singing. The shoppers have separated, giving him all the space he needs. A yellow cap of the style he likes is sitting on top of a pile in a bin tended by a saleswoman whose set smile has given way to dubious wonder. The woman does a nervous skip to the side as he reaches for it. “Here it is! This was made for me.” Stuffing his blue cap into his back pocket, he puts it on.

  The woman, finding her voice, says, “Quatre dollars.”

  Menocchio never mentions money; quatre dollars does not register. Eyes heavenward and tragic, he begins his prayer again. “He thinks he’s God,” explains Geneviève, handing over the money. A grim smile is part of her small moment of revenge.

  He hears it and stops. “Ah,” posed rhetorically to the befuddled shopkeeper, “but doesn’t God look good in a yellow hat?”

  Geneviève plays it out, making a grave show of guiding him through the crowd, leading the deluded man. Clear of them, she warns, “One of these days you’ll be arrested and I’ll be freed.”

  “No, you’ll be lost again. C’est tout.”

  They walk the rest of the way in silence. Before leaving her at her garden gate, he asks, “What about the miracle?”

  “What miracle?” She’s defensive; a newly risen instinct makes her ready to protect this notion.

  “The miracle of the hat.”

  “The hat?” Relaxing. No, not to worry: that stream at the core of her runs in a place he cannot penetrate. “The hat was four dollars. That’s no miracle. Overpriced, in fact.”

  Menocchio appears disappointed by her assessment. He mugs and adjusts his new yellow hat, looking vainly for a smile. Watching his silly vanity, she senses a direction, a possible way out. He leaves her. Opening her gate, returning to her garden, Geneviève looks back toward the corner and bows — quick, imperceptible, the merest nod, merci.

  8. Pressing his advantage

  Geneviève tries Menocchio’s bench one day in late July. It is a perfect summer day, the air fresh and light in the noon heat, the kind of day when a man can feel purposeful, when a woman lets her hair fall across her eyes. Her grey-green eyes appear to sparkle as she gazes through a loose chestnut-coloured tress and asks him, “What if I did it?”

  “You will do it…you are doing it.”

  “What if I sat here every day? What would you do?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Walk by.”

  “We wouldn’t talk anymore?”

  “No. Why would we? We talk because you want to. Because you have a need. Me, I only want things to be in order.” A need for order is not the same as a need for purpose. But she’s not so metaphysically inclined, is Geneviève, and he won’t push that line.

  She asks, “What if I sat here every day and told everyone why?”

  “Why you killed?”

  “Why I was sitting here.”

  “But this is the same difference.”

  “Not at all. You would be part of it. I would tell how you blackmailed me into sitting here.”

  This makes Menocchio sad. Again he tries to tell her, “Menocchio does not blackmail. I have a design and I insist that it be filled. It is you who worries about legalities. This notion of blackmail is part of your problem.” But she declines to explore this direction, thus proving his point.

  Yes, he does enjoy her eyes. Today’s light makes the grey predominant. They are wide, stern, set against the paler sun-toned smoothness of her highly cared-for skin. She fixes them on a dog pissing on a bush. Then on a mother dragging her screaming child from the sandbox. She asks him, “How long would I have to sit here?”

  “Until it is forgotten. Until it becomes a lost thing that no longer has context. Until its meaning can no longer touch anyone who happens by.”

  “That could take forever. A life sentence. Do I deserve that?”

  “What other kind of sentence is there?”

  “You said you didn’t care about murder.”

  “I don’t,” replies Menocchio. “He’s dead and gone. What I care about is your life.”

  “I hate you.”

  “And so?” Her aggression can be titillating. But her contempt is a dead end.

  “I should just go to the police and explain it.”

  “Go!” He extends his hands like the curé at benediction, urging her.

  “It was an accident.”

  He nods. “Completely.”

  “He was a wretched person.”

  “Absolutely. No loss whatsoever. Not even to his mother…a drain on her business.”

  “And that filthy car.”

  “Disgusting. Probably illegal too. The police will be able to tell you, I’m sure.”

  She smiles to herself: hopeful. First time he has seen it. It has to be the weather. She muses, “They might not even believe me. They’ll say, oh that car, it was a rotten crap-heap, rusted beyond reason, couldn’t support the weight of itself on the thing and fell on him. Bang; dead. Stupid man, stupid car, stupid death. They’d probably just send me home.”

  And Menocchio agrees. “They might.”

  “I should do it.”

  “You should. You should tell them everything.”

  Hearing that, her whimsy departs. “Everything?” She sits staring, creature-like, suspicious and uncomprehending.

  So he takes her through it once more: “You can tell them that you come from France. And about your fath
er’s sense of destiny and the dress you wore to your confirmation. And of your mother and your sister and the time the three of you ran off without paying. Ask them if that could be it — if that could have been the seed of it. The need to get away: ask them to explain the mystery… And I think the police will be very interested in the first time you had sex in America. And in how hard you’ve worked. And then you’ll tell them how you hate the cold in this accursed city. And how you hated that man. That ugly uncivilized man who made everything so clear and irrevocable. Yes, go, Geneviève, the police are waiting. They are always there to serve you. And of course you should tell them everything. They expect it. And when you get home, I will meet you and we will walk back here to my bench. In the grand scheme of things, Menocchio comes before the police. And he follows after, always, for the things they leave behind. The police are notorious for leaving bits and pieces in their wake. Hmm?”

  Geneviève gets up and they begin their walk for another day.

  She’s not ready yet. Touching on it, though. He can feel it.

  As usual, she stops at the corner and gazes up at the Virgin. But the Virgin is long gone on a day like this. On this day Her dreams are immaculate, indefinable. She is unreachable. It would be a theological shame if She allowed it to be otherwise. Why doesn’t Menocchio’s murderous Française know this to be true? He says, “Forget her, Geneviève. It’s me now — and your confession. Your confession is the thing that will save you. It’s a grand thing, the biggest in your life! You will sit on my bench and soon the people will dare to ask you for it. All people, not just the police. And you will tell it: Your mistake, and all that it embodies. The thing that is to your advantage here is that you can make it take the rest of your life. By that time, you will have a share in everyone who stops to listen. You will be the centerpiece of Menocchio’s world. A marker. A bit of meaning. When you sit on my bench amid all these thoughtless children, these wishing mothers, these men who wander by, lacking wishes, having only eyes…Geneviève, you will be symbolic! And you will have finally landed in your true life. And I think you will be happy at last, despite this thing you have done.”

  “My true life?” She wonders. Then she walks.

  9. The true life

  They have arrived at a hot and windless August day. They’re watching a team of men dig a hole to find a broken pipe below avenue Christophe Colomb. They always stop when they come upon these situations; the sight of men scooping dirt fascinates Menocchio. It took some coaxing, but now she’ll sit with him on the curb. Her legs are brown, her mind empty as they watch the workers dig. She feels his contentment radiate as he leans close, confiding, “The only thing better would be to bring this scene into my park — to surround my Geneviève on my bench with Men at Work.” Smiling, he sings another fragment of the Latin mass. “Sub umbra illius quem desideraveram sedi, Et fructus eius dulcis gutturi meo, Allelluia.”

  Emboldened, she asks, “Are you a priest who couldn’t make it? Is that it?”

  Scratching tentatively at the stubble under his nose, he asks, “Make what?”

  “A go of it. The life. Celibacy and all that.”

  Preoccupied with his hoary fuzz, he shakes his head. “You’ve missed it by an unimaginable stretch. I told you: I am a man who knows a little about lots of things, who has parlayed that knowing into the proprietorship of a woman named Geneviève and all that surrounds her in a northeast section of a city called Montreal.”

  “How far is an unimaginable stretch?”

  He studies the question. Seeing no harm, he tells her, “From Montereale to Montreal… Montereale in the hills of the Fruili, in the north by Yugoslavie, and as old as those hills, where some of us believe our Dante looked into the gorge and saw his Hell. From Montereale to Montreal. When it came time to leave, I insisted it should be here, to this Montreal. Oh yes, nothing but solipsistic; like travelling through a mirror to a larger reflection in a bigger distance. But this is the true life — yours and mine at least, the only one we can hope to understand, no?”

  Geneviève wonders: Is he aware that he presumes so much?.

  Causing Menocchio to laugh out loud. “Ha! My dear, I presume everything.”

  This is daunting, the way he hears her enmity, yet never the other thing. But she presses on, asking, “What were you in that other Montereale?”

  “B’en, I was Menocchio. I worked on the roads.”

  “You’re hiding something. I know it. A woman always knows.”

  He grins. “You could go to Montereale and ask to see my records. We could travel together. We could walk from Montreal to Montereale. Think of what we might find along the way!”

  “You’ve spent time in a seminary or a jail. Who else could ever know the old Mass so well?”

  “Who else indeed but Menocchio? The old Mass is another thing they’ve let go by. And so I’ve picked it up and taken it home.”

  “You’ve killed someone — and been caught.”

  “Making me your twin.” He claps his huge summer-gold hands in delight. “How exquisite that we would end up with only a fence between us!”

  “And then you moved away with your disgrace.”

  “Is this what you think you need to do? Move away with your disgrace?”

  “Please!” she admonishes, “we are not talking about me right now.”

  “Geneviève, whenever we talk, it is about you.” Standing, he dusts the seat of his pants.

  Geneviève thinks, Yes, it’s always about me…while remaining seated on the curb, lingering, momentarily fixated on a sinewy labourer who too obviously enjoys her attention as he attacks the rubble with his pick. He is beautiful, this man — brown, tight, rhythmic, dripping sweat and smiling; and the moment stretches out, till, hovering above her, Menocchio blurts, “That man will never mean as much as me. Not now.”

  She hears it. From deep inside her trance it’s clear. Tearing her gaze from the man in the hole, looking up as he waits there… It’s Menocchio’s hooded eyes: watery blue and needful. A woman always knows. Suddenly, behind his lordly control and his crude delight in the fact, she sees it. His need. It took a young man’s body to bring it out. Standing, dusting her own rump, she looks back with a quick smile — salut — for the unknown worker, then moves close, within touching distance. And she continues with the game: “A lawyer then. A lawyer who cheated.”

  His smirk flickers. “Do I look like a lawyer? Tell me honestly.”

  “A judge?…a judge who was exposed as less than pure.”

  “No, not that.”

  “A soldier who ran.”

  “I was too smart to ever be a soldier.”

  “A failure…a failed businessman. A bankrupt.”

  “I leave business to my wife.”

  “An artist who found nothing inside himself.”

  The man has nothing to say to that one. They march forward. Setting the pace, Geneviève says, not unkindly, “I think it was something sexual. You have this expectant quality. It’s like seduction, but I suppose it would be hard to talk about, and all the more so for someone of your age. But try, Monsieur Menocchio. Try.”

  “Geneviève, it doesn’t matter what I was and there is nothing to be gained from guessing.”

  “There is a gap and I want it filled before I commit myself to you.” She strides ahead.

  Hearing it, his eyes light up. “There’s no gap!” Hustling after, falling into step, he asks, “Why won’t you believe it was the roads?”

  “I don’t feel the roads when I hear you. I think your found objects are a sham.”

  “But it’s logical!” Menocchio’s voice quavers high and frail. “Roads, streets…this is where things are in transit, the nexus of life’s confusion and confusion is the crux of a traveller’s life. Your life. My life…Pieces break off — they break from the motion roads demand. They fall away from their intended form and become lost. Because they’re not whole and never can be again, they are lost. Even when they are picked up, change hands and go to live i
n another place, the thing that defines them is the quality of the lost. That and the ownership of whoever finds them.”

  “Speak for yourself,” mutters Geneviève, feeling she may start to run. Now would be the moment to break away. Yes? Does she hear him pleading?

  He says, “But look at all the things I’ve picked up along the few roads you and I have walked together. And didn’t I find you in the street that morning? I found you with the thing you had done — the thing you had found: the life of poor lost Miko. You took it from the side of the road, from under a dirty old car. Isn’t this true?”

  No, she can’t run. She has to face this image. Always. Her true life? It can’t be. She slows.

  Sensing capitulation, Menocchio slows the pace still more. “No, it was always the roads, the streets. These are the landscape of Menocchio’s world. The soul’s grid. Logical, inevitable. And with a bench at the heart of it, and someone like you — this is necessary too. No?” He sighs, smiles (not unkindly) and falls silent. By the time they reach the corner they have slowed to his regular ancient-god-like shuffle. Exuding satisfaction, he imparts his thoughts with a god-like space between them:

  I’m thinking I might grow a mustache… A mustache could be the thing.

  She thinks: I swear I should have killed all the men on the stupid street.

  Oh Geneviève, will your mean wishes change the inevitable? Can’t you see I love you?

  No!

  But with a mustache? Would a mustache make it better?

  You’d look absurd with a mustache.

  10. Assumption Day

  It is well marked on her calendar, the one from France put out each year by La Poste and sent faithfully by her sister, and somehow she has been waiting for it. Assumption Day. The day the Virgin ascends to be assumed in the nature of God. It’s humid again, already close when Bruce leaves for his golf at 7:30. Geneviève walks out the gate five minutes later, heading for the church. She moves slowly, the barometer demands it. Maybe Menocchio has seen. Maybe he will follow. At his own risk, then — mornings are her own. Especially this one.

 

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